The invention relates to an apparatus for integrated tool manufacture and to a method for controlling a machine tool and an associated measuring device.
For producing and grinding tools, tool grinding machines are often used in which one or more tools, such as grinding wheels, can be purposefully moved and rotated in multiple directions in space in order to generate complicated geometries, for instance of drills, milling cutters, step drills or the like. This is done by causing the corresponding grinding wheels to machine a blank, for which purpose the blank and/or the grinding wheels are moved along predetermined paths. The paths are generated by the superposition of motions of various driving and guiding devices. These devices are in turn controlled by a machine control program, such as an NC program. Generating suitable NC programs requires knowledge on the part of the user about the machine geometry and NC programming as well as a good capacity for thinking in three dimensions. While the NC programmer seeks to write a program in such a way that the moving grinding wheels create the shape specified by the scale drawing on the blank, he must specify the motion of the individual components (blank and grinding wheels) in increments which have no direct relationship with the drawing data.
For the sake of quality control, measurements are often needed which might need to be performed automatically. This is done by measuring devices with tactile, optical or other kinds of measurement pickups. The measuring devices may be part of the grinding machine or may be in the form of a separate measuring machine.
The motion of the specimen and the sensors, interrogating them, and processing the measured value must in turn be controlled by a measurement program which must be set up by the user.
Changes in the grinding program (the NC program for controlling the grinding machine) in many cases also make it necessary to modify the measurement program. The user must assure both.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,290,571 discloses a program system with which the setup of the NC program can be accomplished without detailed knowledge of machine geometry or NC programming. To that end, the image of a blank and the image of a grinding wheel or other grinding tool on a screen are moved relative to one another in such a way that the desired workpiece appears in virtual form on the screen. The workpiece or tool paths taken are plotted and converted into NC programs.
Measuring the tools created in this way is a separate task, for which U.S. Pat. No. 6,290,571 offers no solution.
With this as the point of departure, it is the object of the invention to create an apparatus for integrated tool manufacture.
It is also an object of the invention to disclose a method for controlling a machine tool and an associated measuring device. Operating the apparatus and performing the method should be possible for a user without knowledge of programming languages.